This is the note I sent to a friend in England. She knows nothing of baseball or the Red Sox.
Tonight is game seven of the American League Championship. In case you are unfamiliar: a game seven means the last game of a series where the winner must win 4 out of 7 games. The Red Sox were down 3 games to 1 and things looked bleak. Facing elimination they won 2 in a row to force a game seven, one of the most exciting/exhilarating situations in American baseball.
The last game seven for the Sox was in 2004 when they became the only team in history to overcome a 3-0 deficit, and they did it against the evil empire that is the Yankees no less. They then went on to win the main goal of each sixth month season, the inter-league championship, the World Series. They won that series in 4 straight. The Sox have another record of being the only team to win 8 post season games in a row.
That 2004 experience brought true tears to many Sox fan’s eyes.
While I do not live my days by the fortunes of the home team, so much was – is – encompassed by that 2004 achievement that I too find tears easily welled by the expanse of its scope. Eighty year old fans, around for each and every disappointing falter since the last championship title in 1918, and young fans of teenage years indoctrinated into the gloomy browed mindset that is – was – Red Sox Nation, all together sighed, screamed, and generally freaked-out and collapsed, not for that familiar and ever-eventual failure, but for what was finally achieved – a win. One win. One.
When folks gripe about the Sox now, I say, “You know, 2004 was enough to satisfy me for years.” Each and every time a smile rises to our faces, they pause in reverent thanks, and say, “Yeah.” Then we clink drinks in toast.
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Go Sox, 2007.
